Whatever you do, son, don’t be a tennis player

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Watching Andy Murray, I decree, is officially a form of torture. If it feels
so for us, the spectators, imagine how it is for him: a palpably decent,
sensitive man, exposing his fragilities in public. Taking off his skin again
and again and flaying himself.

Which leads me to wonder if tennis is the cruellest sport of all. Andre Agassi
thought so: from childhood he hated the game with a dark and secret passion.
It was madness-inducing.

“Tennis players talk to themselves . . . ranting and swearing and conducting
debates with their alter egos. Why? Because tennis is so damn lonely . . .
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